Humanity
by CannedCream
Summary: Short Story. Tali muses about Shepard and on Humanity as a species.


**Humanity**

Tali lied awake in Shepard's bed (their bed, as she was told to think of it) with the firm mattress supporting her and soft sheets veiled over the lower half of her body. Next to her, the man she had fallen in love with slept; one arm wrapped loosely around her waist, the other curled under his head. They had talked that night as they lay together as they did every night now, their voices carrying across a darkness lit only by the soft glow of the fish tank on the far wall as well as the stronger light that shown from her eyes. What made this night's idle conversation different was the serious direction it took; a direction that Tali had no means of taking in the first place. She had voiced a concern; a concern she wasn't even aware she had until it had already been spoken.

"I love your hands," Tali had started, innocently enough that evening as she took Shepard's palm in her own, slowing running her thumb from his pinkie to forefinger and back again.

"My hands?" Shepard asked with a small laugh.

"You're fingers, to be exact," she responded, her tone as silent and serious as  
a school teacher. "You humans have so many of them. They seem like they  
would get in the way, make you clumsy somehow, but they don't. Quarians  
have six figners, so do krogan, and turian, and salarian, but not humans."

Letting go of his hand, Tali reached up and ran her fingers across Shepard's head. "And then there's this; your hair. How many other species do you see with hair? You humans, Shepard, you're all so. . .exotic, I suppose would be the word, so. . .so alien."

"Does that upset you," he asked.

Tali shook her head; a small smile no one would see even if the lights had been on crossed her lips. "Not even a little."

There was a moment of silence that stretched on between the two, and for a  
moment Tali thought that they were done of the night; ready to roll  
over and fall asleep in each other's arms as they had done last night  
and so many other nights before, but then her voice broke the silence  
and the girl found herself asking a question she never meant to ask.

"Is this weird," she suddenly asked, her voice nearly a whisper. "You and  
me; a human and quarian. Is it wrong to become involved with someone  
outside your own species?"

There was another long pause, and for each second that ticked by, Tali's fears grew. She thought she could actually feel her heart sink in her chest. Her first thought was that Shepard had fallen asleep and her question was asked to nothing but the blackness, her second was that he really did find their relationship immoral somehow. She tried to tell herself that such a thing was nonsense; that if he didn't want this than he wouldn't be here, but still. . .the silence scared her.

"Do you love me," Shepard ask;  
there was a seriousness to his tone that somehow shook her up. She had  
to ask him to repeat himself, to make sure she had heard correctly.

"Of course I love you," she said. "Do. . .do you. . .love me?"

Talifelt his arms tighten around her, pulling her body in closer to her  
own. "More than anything. That's why there's nothing wrong about it;  
nothing at all."

Tali melted into his arms; pressing her body as close to his own as she could manage, if it weren't for the mild fever she was already running, she might have torn her mask off right then and covered his face with kisses, it was the only way she thought she could keep her heart from bursting open with the joy she felt. For now, however, she would have to keep those emotions in check. For now.

Soon after Shepard's breathing had slowed, his grip loosened, and the faint  
snores told her that he had drifted off to sleep. For the time being,  
though, Tali stayed awake, not because she couldn't sleep, but because  
she didn't yet want to; for no dream, no matter how sweet or beautiful,  
could match the love she felt right now laying here in Shepards bed, in  
their bed, in the dark, wrapped in the arms of a member of that odd species of creature called human that she had grown to love so much.

-cannedcream

04/25/2010


End file.
